Catalysts
for Change
From analysis to insightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;
and from insight to action.

2

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

M

FEAT URE
from
the dean

aybe you’re an IPA grad, like Ben Williams (p. 25), who earned one
of the University of Michigan’s first Master of Public Administration
degrees in 1948. Or you might be an IPPSter, like Jim Hudak (p. 30),
one of the University’s first public policy graduates. Or perhaps you’re an
SPP grad, like Jason Weller (p. 12), who is now leading public-private collaborations to advance conservation across the United States.
Whenever you graduated, whatever name you use to refer to your alma mater,
I hope you know that today’s school—the Ford School—is your school. I say
all this because 2014 will be an exciting year, indeed a historic year, for your
school. We will host the final events in our centennial celebration of President
Ford’s birth, and will launch a centennial celebration of the school itself, which
first began to offer advanced studies for municipal government leaders in 1914.
Throughout our centennial, we’ll celebrate the impact our faculty and alumni
have had on the world, but we’ll also continue to prepare in earnest for the
century ahead.
On p. 30, our good friends Jim Hudak (MPP ’71) and Jim Hackett (BGS ’77),
the CEO of Steelcase, will share news about the Ford School’s ‘next century’
campaign, designed to inspire future policy leaders, fuel game-changing research,
and catalyze real and lasting change in the world. And throughout the magazine,
you’ll read stories that illustrate the importance of that third pillar of our ‘next
century’ campaign: policy engagement and real-world impact.
» You’ll read about Professor Paul Courant (p. 6), who has launched the
world’s largest digital library, the HathiTrust; and Dr. Matt Davis (p. 14),
who (when he’s not teaching or practicing) is combating socioeconomic
health disparities as Michigan’s chief medical executive.

» You’ll read about a recent bachelor’s alum, Madelynne Wager (p. 9), who
is tackling poverty and inequality issues in Africa; and an early MPP alum,
Eunice Burns (p. 18), who has served her community for decades, and
whose family recently established an endowed fund for water policy
education at the Ford School.
» You’ll read about Latesha Love (p. 10), who has improved the ability of first
responders to communicate in the wake of a disaster; and Marisol Ramos
(p. 16), who has advocated extensively, and successfully, for the rights of
undocumented students at U-M.
We’re so proud of what the Ford School community is doing, and has done, to
make a lasting difference in the world. I look forward to sharing many more
stories about the extended reach and impact of Ford School faculty and alumni
throughout our centennial year.

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable
federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is
committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color,
national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion,
height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries
or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/Section 504/ADA
Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 481091432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

F ALL 2 0 1 3

&

The Magazine of the
Gerald R. Ford School
of Public Policy

A powerful public service 6
Paul Courant’s HathiTrust Digital Library in three acts

BA alum among
‘Top 35 under 35’ foreigners 9
Making an impact in Africa

Share A Century of Stories Throughout 2014—as we celebrate the centennial of the
school’s founding—we’ll share many more stories about the influential work of Ford School faculty
and alumni. We need your help: our self-effacing alums may be unlikely to share their own stories,
but we hope they’ll talk up their classmates at fordschool.umich.edu/100-reunion/memories.

5

Change

6

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

A powerful public service
Paul Courant’s HathiTrust Digital Library in three acts | By Erin Spanier

S

cholarly CVs are long, there’s no
denying it, so it’s not surprising that
Paul N. Courant’s CV stretches
a good twelve feet from end to
end. What is surprising is that
what is likely to be Courant’s single greatest
contribution to scholarship isn’t mentioned
in his CV at all: development of the largest
digital library in the world, the HathiTrust.

Focus: Catalysts

S T A T E & HILL

‘Hathi,’ the Hindi word for elephant, signified the
universities’ aspirations: a large collection with a
powerful search engine and a long memory.
Act 1

T

en years ago, Larry Page (BS ’95),
co-founder of Google, contacted the
University of Michigan to offer a rather
unconventional gift to his alma mater:
scans of the University’s entire collection
of 7 million books, free of charge. Page had just
developed a new scanning system that, unlike
previous scanners, could produce text-searchable
copies at unprecedented scale (millions of
books per year rather than thousands), without
damaging the books themselves.
Courant, an economist then serving as provost—
the chief academic officer of the University—
remembers running a standard cost-benefit
analysis. “What’s it going to cost?,” he asked the
University’s head librarian, Bill Gosling. “What’s
in it for us?” Beyond some staff time, Gosling
explained that the costs would be borne by Page’s
company. But the benefits, says Courant, “were
at least very useful, and possibly super-useful.”
For starters, digitization would provide a backup
copy of the entire library, ensuring the longterm preservation of everything in the collection.
“In the print world, preservation’s assured by
the fact that there are a lot of copies out there,
people toss them on the shelf, and they rot
slowly,” says Courant. But what about historic
collections now out of print? Or texts written by
hand, before the invention of the printing press?
Or limited edition print runs? Think of what
happened to the priceless library of Timbuktu
last January, or the Library of Congress in 1814,
or the great Library of Alexandria, or countless
other small libraries near and far. Libraries are
safe, but hardly invincible, and preservation is
a paramount concern.
Digitization would also make it possible to run
detailed text searches of all of the library’s
collections. In the coming years, a descendant
of the University of Michigan’s first AfricanAmerican student-athlete would use the
HathiTrust Digital Library to locate news
stories about her ancestor. An undergraduate
honors student would use the HathiTrust to
search the complete correspondence and
writings of President Eisenhower for a thesis on
Eisenhower’s attitudes toward nuclear weapons.
And the U.S. Patent and Trade Office would use
the HathiTrust to locate copies of patents lost

in an 1836 fire. Full-text searches would lead
citizens, scholars, and policymakers directly to
the material that interested them, enabling new
and important discoveries.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
digitization would allow the libraries to
offer free online access to all public domain
works—generally works published before
1923, including almost all of the University’s
rare historical collections—for anyone with an
internet connection. What Wikipedia did for
the encyclopedia, digitization could do for the
library—but scholars would be able to access
the original source documents themselves, not
just a summary of their contents. It would be
a powerful public service to the world. “That’s
what libraries do,” says Courant. “That’s what
universities do.”
So after some back-and-forth haggling over
the quality of the scans and access to original
digital copies of each, the University of Michigan
accepted Larry Page’s offer to digitize its
collections. And several years later, after stepping
down as provost, Courant was appointed dean of
libraries, a post that would allow him to continue
to work on the Google scanning project.

Courant was certain that the
University of Michigan could build
a workable system for sharing
its digitized collections. And that
Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, and the
New York Public Library—other early
partners in Google digitization—
could each do the same. But if the
University of Michigan pooled its
collections and resources with other
libraries, he reasoned, couldn’t they
create a single, huge repository that
would reduce institutional costs and
provide streamlined access for users
all around the world?

Act 2
When the Institute of Public Policy
Studies recruited Courant to teach
forty years ago, the University of
Michigan was a worldwide pioneer
in computing. That means U-M had a
few ginormous, and very expensive,
computing towers that faculty could
use for 15 minutes a pop. Today,
nearly every University stakeholder
has at least one personal computer,
often more, and internet access is
ubiquitous in the academic the world.
When the world changes that
dramatically, one can expect brand
new problems, and brand new
opportunities. “The invention of
digital information technology
totally transforms the way in which
you might expect scholarship to be
published and libraries to do their
business,” explains Courant. “How
do we design libraries so we can
really take advantage of this treasuretrove of digitized information?” As
dean of libraries, Courant would
be in the perfect position to solve
those problems, and to grasp those
opportunities—and he knew it.

Courant, working with colleagues at
Indiana University, put together a
business plan to do that, shopped it to
the other members of the Big Ten and
to the University of California system,
and in the course of a few months,
launched a collective digital library,
the HathiTrust.

one savvy user. And they read out-ofprint books, from one virtual cover
to the next, on computers and mobile
devices around the world. In just a
few years, HathiTrust has become
an indispensible part of the scholarly
infrastructure.

Act 3
To be true, Act 3 hasn’t been written
yet. Courant has returned to the
faculty in the Ford School, where
he’ll work to further a pretty hefty
vision for digital libraries and
scholarly publishing. Known as
an outspoken critic of overpriced
scholarly publications, Courant says
now that HathiTrust has been created,
it makes other things possible like,
for example, “creating a platform to
allow people to publish open-access
journals that will be preserved
indefinitely.”

Today, the HathiTrust—by far the
largest digital library anywhere—
includes 80 academic library
members, contains 10.8 million
volumes, and welcomes 50,000
users each weekday (25,000 on
weekend days). Those users
run advanced searches
of the entire collection.
They create their own
sub-collections, like the
collection of 912 Islamic
manuscripts compiled by

HathiTrust’s robust preservation
strategy allows the consortium to
offer permanent storage of scholarly
journals, but the trust will only do
that for open-access titles that are
shared freely. Courant isn’t against
a little “shameless commerce,”
he says (HathiTrust sells reprints
of some out-of-copyright items,
including its top-seller, an 1860s-era
guide to beekeeping), but the
University of Michigan alone spends
more than $10 million a year on
journal subscriptions,
and for smaller academic
institutions—whether in
n 2011, the Authors Guild filed suit against
Kenya, Kazakhstan, or
HathiTrust for copyright violations because the
Kansas—those fees put
HathiTrust holds digitized materials still in
important scholarly research
copyright (as a matter of policy and practice,
well out of reach. ■

I

those materials are only made available to
readers with print disabilities). Judge Harold Baer
ruled decisively against the Guild, referring to the
HathiTrust as an “invaluable contribution to the
progress of science and cultivation of the arts.”
The Authors Guild has appealed, and the outcome
is pending. If the Guild loses, it’s anyone’s guess
whether it will take the case to the U.S. Supreme
Court. But if HathiTrust loses, Courant is confident
that the HathiTrust and its members will. He
writes, “Nonprofit organizations, emphatically
including research libraries, are the natural
stewards of information that will be of value to
society for the indefinite future, precisely because
we are driven by a mission of preservation and
access, rather than by profit.”

Focus:
S T A T E & HILL

Catalysts
9

BA alum among ‘Top 35 under 35’
foreigners making an impact in Africa

*

M

adelynne Wager (BA ’13), a first
generation college student from the
small town of Greenville, Mich., knew
she wanted to make an impact. When
she started her studies at the University
of Michigan, she thought she could do that best
by becoming a doctor. But during a summer
medical internship in Venezuela, Wager became
deeply troubled by the health disparities she
witnessed between the wealthy patients at the
region’s spotless, upscale hospital, and what the
poor confronted at the area’s crowded, unkempt
clinic. Why are poor people getting so much
sicker in the first place, she wondered, and if
poverty makes you vulnerable, can a living wage
improve your health?

Wager soon shifted her attention to international
economics. Her experience in Venezuela was a
major catalyst, but there was another reason,
too. She couldn’t shake the memory of when
Electrolux, the largest manufacturer in her
hometown, moved its manufacturing operations to
Mexico, removing 30 percent of her small town’s
tax base. “I saw the huge impact that it had on our
town, and my friends, and their families,” says
Wager, who began to wonder if there were ways
to help workers in developing countries without
taking jobs away from families in developed ones.
As a public policy major and international
economics minor, Wager worked with Alberto
Trejos , a Towsley Foundation Policymaker
in Residence at the Ford School, and Howard
Stein, a professor of African and Afro-american
Studies and a faculty associate with the Ford
School’s International Policy Center. She also
joined the ONE campus challenge, lobbying
Congressional representatives in Washington,
DC to support proven USAID programs in

developing nations. “That’s when I began to
see the policymaking process could be a way
to systematically change things,” says Wager.

Madelynne Wager (BA ’13) in
Johannesburg, South Africa.

Later, Ford School financial support made it
possible for Wager to undertake a prestigious
DC-based fellowship with the Center for the
Study of the Presidency and Congress, where
she conducted advanced research on U.S.

“Young South African leaders have a real entrepreneurial
spirit. Perhaps ironically, they’ve taught me a lot about
what it means to be an American.”
interventions to reduce poverty and inequality in
Africa. Today, with some encouragement from
Alberto Trejos, Wager is continuing that work far
from her hometown, pursuing innovative solutions
to extreme global poverty as the Machel-Mandela
Fellow at South Africa’s Brenthurst Foundation
(where Trejos serves on the board).
Wager’s primary project at the Brenthurst
Foundation is conducting research on inequality
and how the private sector can help. “I think
a lot of times, we look at governments as
being both the culprit and the supposed hero
of inequality,” says Wager. But to Wager, an
equally important
conversation is the
one that focuses
on the imperative
of private sector
innovation to better
the living standards of
the billions currently
excluded from the
market system. ■

* As selected in 2013 by the youth organization Young People in International Affairs.

atesha Love (MPP ‘02) was two weeks
into her second year of graduate school
in Ann Arbor, getting dressed for class
and watching the news with an absentminded interest, when she realized that
“something was really, really, really wrong.”
It was the morning of September 11, and Love,
like everyone else in America, quickly became
riveted by the events unfolding on her television.

The North Tower of the World Trade Center had
collapsed after a hijacked plane had been flown
into it. The South Tower had been struck, too,
as had the Pentagon in Washington, DC. And
just before 10 a.m., nearly an hour after Flight
175 first crashed into it, Love watched as the
South Tower collapsed, crushing hundreds of

New York City firefighters who had rushed in,
even as police, on orders to evacuate, rushed out.
Though she couldn’t have imagined it at the
time, investigating this single hour between
strike and collapse would be the primary focus
of Love’s work for nearly two years when she
joined the Government Accountability Office
as a policy analyst after graduation. When the
police realized the second tower would fall,
why didn’t they warn the firefighters? What
was wrong with the city’s emergency
communication system?
Love interviewed officials at a half-dozen federal
agencies, talked to prominent communication
experts around the nation, and interviewed
or visited first responders and emergency
managers from New York and nine other states.
The goal: “to make the whole story unfold from
a bird’s eye view.”
The city’s poorly designed wireless
communications systems, she discovered,
hadn’t allowed firefighters, police, and
paramedics to share crucial, life-saving
information during the disaster. Each agency
had its own equipment and frequency. So the
police could communicate with the police, but
not with the firefighters, or the paramedics,
or the state, or the federal government.

Above: Latesha Love (MPP ’02) in Washington, DC.
Left: 56-foot-long bronze memorial to the fallen firefighters
of the FDNY, located across the street from ground zero.

memorial photo: Kevin Lund

10

Focus: Catalysts

S T A T E & HILL

11

“This wasn’t just about a 9/11-sized terrorist attack. This was
about responding to a tornado that goes across two counties,
or responding to a hurricane, or a storm, or a flood.”
The emergency communication system itself
was flawed. And, alarmingly, the flaw wasn’t
an isolated anomaly. This was an issue all
across the nation, Love was finding, and one
that was being exacerbated as the federal
government awarded some $2 billion in
post-9/11 grants for enhanced emergency
communications systems—without requiring
recipients to effectively address interagency
communications.
“There were two ‘ah ha’ moments for me,”
says Love, looking back. First, that all across
the nation states were receiving grants,
significant amounts of money, to build
emergency communication systems, but no
one was ensuring that these systems would
communicate with each other. “We were
spending money to make the problem worse,”
explains Love. The second ‘ah ha’ moment?
That even if every agency in the nation
magically used those grants to buy equipment
that would be capable of communicating with
the others, it still wouldn’t solve the problem.
The federal government, explains Love, uses
particular communication frequencies. States use
other frequencies. Local governments use others,
still. “You could buy all the expensive equipment
you wanted; if it couldn’t actually operate on the
same radio spectrum, it wouldn’t matter.”
Love’s team at the GAO compiled a 100-page
report explaining the issues in great detail,
and laying out five recommendations. The
first two dealt with the federal funding issue,
recommending that the grant process be quickly
revised to require that each state develop a
single interoperable emergency communication
plan (a plan to ensure that all relevant agencies
could communicate in a crisis) and that every
funding proposal conform with that state-wide
plan. The next two recommended an analysis
of the current state of wireless public safety
communication systems around the nation
and the development of a national database of
emergency communication frequencies. And the
last? The development of a permanent agency
responsible for monitoring and improving the
nation’s emergency communication systems.
In the years since the GAO’s 2004 report,
all of these recommendations have been
implemented, and every state in America
now has a federally approved interoperable
communications plan.

Asked if we’ve had a crisis recently that has
tested America’s interoperable communications
system, Love says “yes, all of them.”
“This wasn’t just about a 9/11-sized terrorist
attack,” says Love. “This was about responding
to a tornado that goes across two counties, or
responding to a hurricane, or a storm, or a flood.”
After Love’s initial report on 9/11
communications, she was assigned a series
of unrelated studies reviewing post-disaster
responses to Hurricane Katrina and a number
of other storms. “It was ironic,” says Love.
“I’d go to these meetings to investigate the
response to natural disasters and one of the
things they would always talk about was
interoperable communications, exactly what
I’d addressed after 9/11—what they’d done,
how it had worked… So is there one event?
No. All of them are affected by our ability to
communicate better now.”
Today, Love leads teams of analysts that
investigate a wide variety of Congressional
concerns, recommending actionable solutions
that save U.S. taxpayer dollars, while improving
the efficiency and effectiveness of government.
“The Ford School taught me how to conduct
and write analysis that is balanced, objective,
direct, and above reproach,” says Love.
“In DC, a truly independent, unbiased review
is rare and it’s powerful.” ■

officer for the Department of Homeland Security, spoke about the use of big data
when he visited the school in September. Bersin was the 2013 Josh Rosenthal
Education Fund Lecturer. The fund was created in memory of Josh Rosenthal ,
a 1979 U-M graduate who died at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

12

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Focus: Catalysts

Matching and mobilizing private
investments in conservation
By Erin Spanier

J

(MPP ’99) was just out of
college, with a still-crisp undergraduate
degree, when the native northernCalifornian took an unlikely summer
job on a family ranching operation
in Big Timber, Montana. He was expecting a
“Brad Pitt, Legends of the Fall experience,” he
recalls with self-deprecating humor; instead,
he wound up working harder than he’d ever
worked in his life. He fixed the fences, shoveled
the manure, stacked the hay, and dodged the
bulls and rattlesnakes; but his most important
responsibility was irrigation.
ason Weller

Jason Weller

In America’s dry prairies, irrigation is no small
concern. In average years, the region gets less
than half the rainfall seen in Washington, DC;
in drought years, which hit unpredictably, the
challenge is even worse. To grow forage crops for
their cattle, the ranch owners channeled water
from the Crazy Mountains and flooded each of
their fields in turn. That was the system Weller
helped run that summer, so he was familiar with
its workings. By luck or by fate, though, it was
also the summer the ranch owners chose to work
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil
Conservation Service, an agency now known as
the Natural Resources Conservation Service, to
install an irrigation pipeline.
The new irrigation system was a big undertaking.
Though the government would cover some of
the cost, the family had to pay the rest, and it
wasn’t cheap, not in money, or in time. But in
the end, says Weller, it saved them water,

a precious commodity in the prairie, and
time that they could spend on other revenuegenerating activities.
For Weller, it was a touchstone experience—
one that left him with great respect for the
agricultural profession, a lifelong passion
for natural resource issues, and a dogged
determination to support farmers and ranchers
in more systematic ways.
Weller’s is one story in tens of thousands
that illustrate the powerful work of the
Natural Resources Conservation Service, an
11,000-person federal agency with offices in just
about every county in the nation. Inducted as
chief of the agency this summer, Weller couldn’t
be more enthusiastic about the mission—to help
private landowners increase their efficiency
and productivity through proven conservation
practices. “In the lower 48 states, there are 1.9
billion acres of land, and 1.4 billion of them are
privately owned” says Weller. “So if you want to
make a real difference in protecting our nation’s
natural resources, you have to work with
landowners.”
To understand how NRCS works, and what makes
it so remarkable, it’s best to look at the exigent
concern that sparked its creation: the 1930s-era
Dust Bowl. Sometimes dubbed “the worst manmade environmental disaster in American
history,” the Dust Bowl, and the crop failures that
went along with it, fueled some of our nation’s
darkest days during the Great Depression.

Hugh Hammond Bennett (right), first
chief of the Soil Conservation Service,
on a farm in Washington, DC circa 1951.

Ford School Spotlight

S T A T E & HILL

Immigration reform was the topic of
Cecilia Muñoz (AB ‘84)’s Policy Talks @ the
Ford School lecture in October. Muñoz is
the assistant to President Obama and
director of the Domestic Policy Council;
she was the Ford School’s 2007 Towsley
Foundation Policymaker in Residence.

Imagine yourself a farmer in America’s sun-baked
heartland. You cast your eyes to the horizon, and
see a dark cloud rushing toward you. You pray that
it’s rain. In a parched land, good rains mean healthy
crops, food for your family, and a little cash to set
aside for the future. In 1930s-America, however,
those prayers were likely to go unanswered.

Initially, it didn’t matter what farmers did to
America’s southwest soil—under the protective
prairie grasses, the soil had grown rich and fertile.
But when the rains stopped coming, soils depleted
by poor agricultural practices began to blow across
the country in great clouds, coating desks as far
away as Philadelphia, New York, and Washington,
DC alike, and causing extreme and debilitating
poverty for the families who relied on those farms
for their livelihoods.
Background image: Library of Congress

Inset Photos: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

At first, American agricultural policy and practices
only compounded the issue. In 1939, Ayers Brinser,
who went on to be an original founder of the
University of Michigan’s master’s of public policy
degree program, wrote that two major forces had
contributed to the ecological disaster: a belief on the
part of Americans that land was an inexhaustible
resource, and a belief on the part of government
that land should be made available to anyone who
wanted to farm it.

America’s policy response was bold and multifaceted. To address the immediate suffering,
farming families were compensated for lost livestock
and voluntary crop reductions, were relocated to
less arid areas if they wanted to continue farming,
or were given new jobs if they wanted to leave the
profession. To address the root problem, a new

Weller in Arkansas learning about the
automated Grand Prairie Agricultural
Water Enhancement Program project.

agency was established: the U.S. Soil Conservation
Service, which would promote more sustainable
farming practices.
The Soil Conservation Service hired technical
experts to advance scientific understanding of
erosion and the measures that could be used to
combat it. Those experts performed soil surveys to
identify high-risk soils, crafted flood control plans
for targeted watersheds, and developed farmspecific conservation recommendations. With help
from the Civilian Conservation Corps, the agency
built local demonstration projects, all around the
country, to draw attention to sustainable farming
practices. And it promoted the development of some
3,000 locally-run Soil Conservation Districts that
would steward regional conservation projects far
into the future.
Over the past few years, the American southwest has
again experienced drought—the worst to hit in the last
five decades—but, says Weller, many of the region’s
grain farmers have continued to see record yields.
Why? Because scientific understanding has
improved dramatically, and farmers have grown
wiser about cover crops, no-till techniques, and
other proven practices that improve the health
of soil; so, even in drought years, farms continue
to produce. We can attribute a good deal of that
wisdom to the agency Weller leads, which last year
alone helped private landowners improve irrigation
efficiency, soil quality, and water quality on tens of
millions of acres. The catalyst: federal dollars and
technical expertise that matches and mobilizes
private investments in conservation. ■

r. Matthew Davis is not your typical
physician. Sure, he attended medical
school and completed a residency, just
like his peers. But while continuing
his studies as a Robert Wood Johnson
Clinical Scholar at the University of Chicago,
Davis also earned a master’s degree in public
policy. Davis still sees and serves primary care
patients through his practice with the University
of Michigan Health System, but his public policy
training, and what he’s done with it over the
years, is allowing him to serve the health needs
of much larger communities, in much broader
ways. These days, he’s doing that as chief
medical executive for the state of Michigan—
a role he took on in March of this year.

“Sometimes the questions that
I ask, and the problems I find
compelling, sound and look
more familiar to my colleagues
in policy than to my peers in
health care, but that’s not a
problem…it’s an asset.”
Matthew Davis

What’s in the job description for Michigan’s
chief medical executive? Simply put, informing
policy decision-making in the Department of
Community Health, the largest of the state’s 18
agencies. For Davis, that’s meant helping to craft
the state’s response to public health threats like
heat waves, communicable disease outbreaks
like whooping cough and Middle East respiratory
syndrome, and, of particular interest to
someone with a longstanding passion for policy,
Michigan’s statewide implementation of new
legislation like the Healthy Michigan Act—the
state’s answer to the federal Affordable Care Act.

Davis’s interest in health and health care policy
is nothing new. Since 2000, the professor of
public policy, pediatrics and communicable
diseases, and internal medicine has developed
and taught a series of well-received courses
on health policy and health care reform for
students at the Ford School, the Medical
School, and the School of Public Health. While
many of the students Davis teaches go on to
serve the organizations that craft and refine
health and health care policy, Davis jumped
at the opportunity to play a leadership role
himself—specifically in addressing one of the
Affordable Care Act’s larger goals, eliminating
socioeconomic health disparities.
“Whole books have been written about why
it’s so difficult to reduce socioeconomic health
disparities,” says Davis. “But the persistent
challenges relate mainly to variable access
to timely, appropriate, and effective health
care, and the choices that individuals and
families make, or fail to make, to protect and
improve their own health.” To address these
challenges, state legislators recently crafted
the Healthy Michigan Act, signed by Governor
Rick Snyder just a few months ago, that is
intended to increase both the number of lowincome residents covered by Medicaid and the
range of services, including preventive services,
these residents can access. As a member of
the leadership team within the Department of
Community Health, Davis was directly involved
in working with the Michigan legislature to
ensure that the Healthy Michigan Act has the
best chance to benefit patients living in the state.
Now that Healthy Michigan has been enacted,
Davis is part of the team working to implement
the plan for launch in 2014.
Davis is hopeful that the Healthy Michigan Act,
and the increased coverage it offers, will help
reduce the state’s long-term struggles with
socioeconomic health disparities. “Trying to
move the needle in Michigan is tough; we rank
in the bottom half, if not in the bottom third,
of states when it comes to most racial, ethnic,
and income-related disparities in health and

S T A T E & HILL

pressure, diabetes, and depression—
that need to be managed for a
healthy delivery and a healthy baby.”
Davis says his public policy training
has given him a valuable perspective
for addressing health and health care
challenges. “Sometimes the questions
that I ask, and the problems I
find compelling, sound and look
more familiar to my colleagues in
policy than to my peers in health
care,” says Davis. “But that’s not
a problem…it’s an asset. I really
count on my formal background in
public policy, and the expertise and
discussions I’ve been part of at the
Ford School, to help me do the best
job I can in this still relatively new
role.” While working as chief medical
executive, Davis will continue to
serve on the faculty at U-M.

health care,” says Davis. “That said, there’s a
very strong commitment, from the Governor’s
office on down, to look unflinchingly at
these disparities and commit to doing things
differently than we have in the past.”
Among the many socioeconomic health
disparities Davis hopes to address is the state’s
deeply troubling infant mortality rate. For every
1,000 live births in Michigan, seven infants
die before their first birthday—well above the
national average. Among black infants, or
infants born in cities with high poverty rates
like Detroit, that number can be twice as high.
Asked if he thinks expanded Medicaid can solve
the problem, Davis says he does. “Other states
that already have more generous Medicaid
coverage for adults (regardless of whether or
not they’re pregnant) have shown us that when
you cover women prior to their pregnancies,
you can address conditions—such as high blood

To help other health care
professionals acquire this kind
of broader policy lens, Davis is
teaching a free online course through
Coursera, a massive open online
curriculum (MOOC) platform that
the University of Michigan launched last year.
Davis’s course, “Understanding and Improving
the U.S. Health Care System,” enrolled more
than 10,000 domestic and international students
when it was first offered this fall—many of them
health care professionals and administrators.
The course includes video interviews with Ford
School faculty members Helen Levy , a staffer
for President Obama’s Council of Economic
Advisers, and Dr. John J.H. “Joe” Schwarz ,
a physician and former U.S. Congressman
(R-MI), who bring their unique perspectives to
the material. “Very few medical schools have
the faculty base with which to provide health
policy education,” says Davis, but “for health
care providers to be functioning at their best,
they need to know how the health care system
is supposed to work, and how they can help
to improve it.” ■

R

ecently, Matt Davis and his research staff developed
WellSpringboard, an online platform for crowdsourcing—and
crowdfunding—health research ideas, pairing these groups

with the scientists best placed to address these issues. “In our
health care system, and in systems around the world, we don’t
involve the public much in asking the questions. We only ask them
to participate in studies that come from researchers’ questions,”
says Davis. He strongly believes that the dynamic between patients
and researchers must be “disruptively altered” to advance medical
research while enhancing public trust, participation, and innovation.

15

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Focus: Catalysts

From dreaming to doing—
tuition equality now
By Lillien Waller

O

n April 17, 2013, at approximately
6:00 p.m., 50-60 people gathered
outside the Michigan Union, at
the intersection of State Street
and South University. U-M student
activists and Ann Arbor community members
had come to protest the University’s in-state
tuition policy, which at that time excluded
undocumented Michigan high school graduates.
By 7:00 p.m., the protesters had blocked the
intersection. “What do we want?” they chanted,
in a classic protest call and response. “Tuition
equality! When do we want it? Now!” Eight
were arrested, including Ford School alumna
Marisol Ramos (MPP/MA ’13) who, despite her
youth, has been an immigrant rights activist
and organizer for nearly a decade.
Over a cup of coffee in southwest Detroit’s Cafe
Con Leche, Ramos talked about
the demonstration and
her work as an activist.
Her parents emigrated
from a small, rural town
in Mexico to the Bronx

Above: Marisol Ramos
(MPP/MA ’13) (right)
being arrested outside
the Michigan Union
during an April 17
protest.
Right: A U-M police
officer talks with Kevin
Mersol-Barg (BA ’13)
as he sits in the middle
of State Street, blocking the flow of traffic.

in New York City, where Ramos was born.
“I didn’t really become involved until I was in
college, in the mid-2000s and right around
the time of the big immigration marches of
2006,” Ramos explained. “I became politically
aware and worked as a youth organizer with
immigrant communities in New York. And that
led to my involvement in immigration issues at
the state level.”
In 2005, Ramos cofounded the New York State
Youth Leadership Council, an organization that
promotes equal access to higher education for
young immigrants, leadership development,
and grassroots organizing. She is also a
cofounder of the United We Dream Network,
the largest organization led by immigrant
youth in the country.
But after years of activism and accomplishment,
Ramos realized that she lacked the policy training
to be a truly effective advocate for the rights of
immigrant youth. And so she came to the Ford
School, where her activism background provided
a context for what she was learning in policy
courses.

Photos (this page): Terra Molengraff/Michigan Daily

16

“When you get to writing a
bill, for example, there is a
cast of characters that you
have to keep in mind,and if
we’re not included in that
policymaking process, our
voices are ignored.”

S T A T E & HILL

Marisol Ramos

Ramos’ recalled Professor Richard Hall ’s core
politics course (currently “Politics, Institutions,
and Processes: National”) where students
explored how to size up stakeholders in the
policymaking process. “When you get to writing
a bill, for example, there is a cast of characters
that you have to keep in mind,” said Ramos.
She realized that she herself was one of those
stakeholders: “And if we’re not included in that
policymaking process, our voices are ignored.”
In an education policy course with Chuck
Wilbur , she began to research the issues
surrounding public university tuition for
undocumented youth in Michigan. Ramos
explained, “I did a lot of calling people,
doing one-on-one interviews. When I started
working at the Forum [The National Forum
on Higher Education for the Public Good],
I continued having conversations with different
administrators at higher education institutions,
including Wayne State University and Ferris
State. In all those conversations, everybody said,
‘If [the University of] Michigan does it, then we
might,’” Ramos recalled. “That meant we had
to get U-M to do it.”

Photo (top): Gabriel Martinez

As a seasoned organizer, Ramos served as an
adviser for the Coalition for Tuition Equality
(CTE), founded by Kevin Mersol-Barg (BA
’13) in 2011. CTE eventually comprised over
30 organizations working to secure in-state
tuition for undocumented Michigan students.
“Marisol played a really fascinating role,” said
Mersol-Barg. “She spent numerous years in New
York working with activists across the country
around this issue. She facilitated our work with
the National Forum on Higher Education. She
also mediated between CTE and some national
activists so we could find ways to bring them
to campus.”
CTE applied external pressure to U-M
administrators by educating the broader
campus community about the issue, bringing
national speakers to campus, and staging
demonstrations. But the organization
also worked internally with University
administrators on a task force initiated by thenUniversity Provost Phil Hanlon in April 2012.

Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic
affairs, chaired the task force, which had been
charged with researching the pros and cons
of tuition equality. “I enjoyed working with all
of them [CTE students]. We visited California
universities—Berkeley and UCLA—and met
with a number of people and found that there
was enormous support for undocumented
students,” said Monts, who noted that, from the
very beginning, the provost’s office had been
responding to activism by students like Ramos,
Mersol-Barg, and the Coalition for Tuition
Equality.
In March 2013, the task force presented its
findings to the U-M Board of Regents. On July
18, the Board of Regents passed new guidelines
extending in-state tuition rates to U.S. military
veterans and to undocumented students who
graduated and attended a Michigan high school
for at least three years and a Michigan middle
school for at least two years. ■

Yes, you!
The unlikely and absolutely inspiring career of Eunice Burns | By Lillien Waller

E

(MPA ’70) holds up a
photograph taken at her 90th birthday
celebration. It’s of her children—
Catherine’s the oldest; then there’s
Laurie, Robert, and Tamara. In the
picture Burns beams with pride, as she does
now. Over the years, Burns’ children have
organized small tributes on her birthday to
honor her lifetime of dedication to the city of
Ann Arbor; on a number of occasions she has
received proclamations from the mayor.
unice Burns

This year they held to that tradition but they
also established the Eunice Burns Fund for
Water Policy Education at the Ford School
(previously the Institute of Public Policy Studies,
or IPPS), from which she graduated in 1970.
Eunice Burns
(MPA ‘70)

For 52 years Burns has played many roles in
Ann Arbor civic life—including three terms
as a member of City Council—and for most of
that time she has also served on the board of
the Huron River Watershed Council (HRWC).
In 1981, she co-founded Huron River Day, an
annual preservation event emphasizing the
importance of water quality.
The gift to the Ford School is a fitting
tribute to this farm girl and former physical
education teacher who was born and raised
in southern Minnesota, “15 miles as the crow
flies from the Mississippi” as she says. Who
could have predicted that she would become a
powerful voice in Ann Arbor political life and
a passionate advocate of civic engagement?
Certainly not Burns.

“Now what am I going to do?”

In 1961, Burns’ husband, microbiologist and
U-M professor Charles Burns, encouraged her to
step up to a new challenge: run for a vacant City
Council seat.
“Who me?” she asked.
“Yes, you!” he replied.
“But I can’t,” she told him, “I don’t even like
speaking in front of groups.”
“What do you believe in? What would you like
to accomplish?”
“I’d like to pass the Fair Housing Ordinance,”
she said.
“I campaigned and did the whole thing. I was
scared to death the first time I went out to meet
people, but I went to every door in the ward.
The first person I met didn’t speak English;
I spent 15 minutes trying to talk to her,” Burns
recalls, laughing. “Usually, I would just hand
out my literature and say, ‘unless you have any
questions, I’ll just keep going.’”
Burns continues, “But then I kind of liked it;
it was fun. So I went to all those doors, and
I won.” She thought to herself, now what am
I going to do?
The first part of the Ann Arbor Fair Housing
Ordinance passed in 1963; the full ordinance
passed during Burns’ second term in September
of 1965. It was the first such statute in Michigan.
“I discovered that I knew more than a lot of the
men on that council because, even though I had

3/4

97

2/3

1

1/6

Approximate
fraction of the
earth’s surface that
is covered in water

Percent of the
earth’s water that is
salt, and therefore
unfit for drinking

Fraction of the
earth’s remaining
freshwater that is
locked in ice caps,
glaciers, and
permafrost

Approximate
percent of earth’s
freshwater that is
accessible and
drinkable

Fraction of the
world’s population
that lacks access
to safe drinking
water

S T A T E & HILL

four children, I studied and learned,” she says.
In 1965, the untimely death of Charles Burns in a
sailboat accident put Eunice Burns’ resolve to the
test. “I had four children, so I needed to go on,”
she recalls.
After the City Council, Burns worked on her
Master of Public Policy degree. She secured course
credits for prior experience from Pat Crecine ,
then chair of IPPS. “I walk in the door, and he
says, ‘Oh, I see you’ve been on City Council; I
think you ought to have 6 credits.’ One credit for
each year,” she says chuckling.
Master’s degree in hand, Burns didn’t feel
particularly savvy about the job search. “I just
went to my friends and said, ‘Hey, I’m available!’”
It worked. Burns assisted Wilbur Cohen, former
dean of the School of Education. For part of
that time, she also worked directly for President
Robben Fleming as the chair of the U-M
Commission for Women. She authored the Burns
Report on women in intercollegiate athletics,
which recommended actions to implement Title IX
in the wake of its passage in 1972. After a decade
of service to the University, Burns retired in 1982.

Photo: Huron River Watershed Council

Illustration: Michigan Sea Grant

The “Yes, You!” Proclamation

Among Burns’ many roles, she continues to
sit on the board of the HRWC, which recently
honored her with the inaugural Herb Munzel
Lifetime Achievement Award. “Eunice Burns’
leadership and commitment to the development
of citizen science and stewardship has helped
foster the effectiveness of HRWC,” says executive
director Laura Rubin. “She has made a significant
difference in improving the water quality and the
quality of life in Ann Arbor.”
On Burns’ 90th birthday, Ann Arbor mayor
John Hieftje proclaimed her the “Yes, You!”
Torch Bearer for a lifetime of service. Looking
back on an unexpected but influential career, she
advises young women to “find out what’s going
on and get involved with some part of it—you can
start just licking envelopes. I remember the first
door I knocked on when I was campaigning, and
it got easier and easier after that. You just have
to take the first step and see where it leads you.
And at age 90, I still haven’t stopped!” ■

2.1

18

Number of people,
in millions, who die
annually due to
unsafe drinkingwater conditions

Percent of the earth’s
freshwater that is
held in the Great
Lakes watershed

Source: Unless otherwise noted, all data from The Great Lakes Water Wars, by Peter Annin.
Published by Island Press, a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics, in 2006.

The legacy of Eunice Burns
Launched with a $35,000 gift, the Eunice
Burns Fund for Water Policy Education will
support educational and research activities at
the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy
(CLOSUP). The fund will enable students,
scholars, and the public to better understand
the policy implications around sustainable
methods of managing the world’s supply of
fresh water, and related issues associated
with effective environmental governance.
The gift to the Ford School is also a gift
to Eunice Burns from her children as a
way to honor her steadfast commitment
to her family, the U-M, Ann Arbor, and the
environment. “The four of us started
talking about it, and everyone was very
enthusiastic,” says Burns’ daughter Laurie
Burns McRobbie. “We also needed to do this
in a way that would allow her to interact with
the students who benefit from the fund.
I think, more than anything, what she
exemplifies is the notion that everybody has
the ability to step up and make a difference.”

Burns on the Huron River.

19

20

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Fac ulty

High honors
Ford School faculty took home prestigious awards this fall

In September, Professor
Robert Axelrod was
presented the 2013 Johan
Skytte Prize in Political
Science. The Skytte Prize, one
of the most prestigious awards
in political science, recognizes
outstanding academics and
their contributions to the field.
The Skytte Foundation
selected Axelrod for having
“profoundly changed our
presumptions about the
preconditions for human
cooperation …[H]is findings
are of crucial importance
to a better understanding
of international relations,
negotiations, complex
organizations, and political
decision-making assemblies.”
Axelrod was presented with
the award during a ceremony
held at Uppsala University in
Sweden. The Skytte Prize is in
its 19th year and is named for
Uppsala’s 17th century vicechancellor, Johan Skytte.

Also in September, Assistant
Professor Joshua Hausman—
who recently joined the Ford
School and whose research
focuses on economic history
and macroeconomics—won
the 2013 Allan Nevins Prize in
American Economic History for
his dissertation titled “New
Deal Policies and Recovery
from the Great Depression.”

The Michigan Women’s Hall of
Fame was created in 1983 to
celebrate Michigan women’s
history, promote educational
opportunities, and honor the
accomplishments of Michigan
women. In the past 30 years,
over 260 pioneering women
have been inducted, including
former First Lady Betty Ford.

The Nevins Prize recognizes
the best dissertation in U.S.
or Canadian economic history.
Hausman received this award
at the 73rd Annual Meeting
of the Economic History
Association in Washington, DC.

Susan M. Dynarski,
postdoctoral fellow
Joshua M. Hyman, and
Northwestern University
Associate Professor Diane
Whitmore Schanzenbach,
received the Raymond Vernon
Memorial Award. The Vernon
Award is given to the best
research paper published in
the current volume of the
Association of Public Policy
and Analysis Management’s
(APPAM) flagship journal, The
Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management (JPAM).

In October, Professor Marina
v.N. Whitman was inducted

into the 2013 class of the
Michigan Women’s Hall of
Fame. Having served as the
first woman on the Council of
Economic Advisers under
President Nixon and then as a
leading executive at General
Motors, Whitman received this
distinction for her lifelong
leadership in business.

In November, Professor

Dynarski and Hyman’s paper,
“Experimental Evidence on
the Effect of Childhood
Investments on Postsecondary
Degree Attainment and
Degree Completion” examined
what insights can be learned
from continued research on
policies and experiments from
the past, and the merging of
old data with newer data. The
authors used these practices
to enhance the understanding
of the effects of early
interventions on later
outcomes. ■

Axelrod Hausman Whitman Dynarski Hyman

S T A T E & HILL

The People’s House
Gerald Ford’s congressional legacy

Before Nixon’s fall, before Agnew’s fall, Gerald R. Ford spent 25 years in the U.S.
House of Representatives. But while everyone remembers his presidency, and the
“extraordinary circumstances” under which he assumed the post, too few recall
the influential role he played as a moderate Republican in Congress.

Photo: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

House Republicans
applaud the newly elected
House Minority Leader,
Gerald R. Ford (arm raised),
in January 1965.

I

n 1946, after the close of World War II,
Gerald Ford returned from service in the
U.S. Navy to his hometown of Grand Rapids,
Michigan and resumed civilian life. Almost
immediately, the young Ford became
immersed in a wide variety of political and
civic causes. He was working as a lawyer,
with the hopes of making partner some day,
and the idea of running for an elected office
was a distant and somewhat hazy dream.
So Ford followed local political happenings
with his innate curiosity, but wasn’t deeply
involved until he found himself disagreeing
with his district’s Representative, Bartel Jonkman,
on a matter that concerned him deeply.
Jonkman—like many Republicans of the
era—was a staunch isolationist when it
came to foreign policy. He strongly opposed
President Truman’s plan to assist in the post-

war reconstruction of Europe, including the
reconstruction of former enemy states, Germany
and Italy. Ford was a Republican too, of course,
but one who had become convinced during
his service in the Navy that America had a
responsibility to promote and preserve world
peace, and that rebuilding war-torn nations—
whether friend or foe—would be a good way to
do that. So Ford chose to run against Jonkman.
Though Jonkman was a powerful politician,
Ford ran a smart campaign, and won with an
impressive 60.5 percent of the votes, joining the
U.S. House of Representatives in 1949.
At the age of 37, before the end of his first
term in Congress, Ford was appointed to the
quiet but powerful House Appropriations
Committee, where he would serve for more
than a decade. During these years, Ford worked
to save taxpayer dollars, advance government

21

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Gerald Ford’s 25-year career in Congress was marked by a record of dedicated
leadership and a unique ability to foster enduring relationships among both
Republicans and Democrats. “I’m forever fond of Gerald Ford and all he did as a
great leader of our nation, especially because he was a fellow son of Michigan.”
—Congressman John D. Dingell (MI-12)
efficiency, and invest in America’s military to
preserve the peace. In 1961, the American
Political Association presented Ford with its
Congressional Distinguished Service Award,
calling him a moderate conservative, highly
respected by both parties, “who eschews the
more colorful publicity seeking roles in favor of
a solid record of achievement in the real work
of the House: Committee work.” James Cannon,
author of Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life,
writes, “To the Association, as in the House,
Ford was not a show horse, but a workhorse….”
Ford didn’t write legislation, or drive new
Republican bills, but he was influential.
Throughout the 1950s, Ford served on a
number of other subcommittees, including
the Foreign Operations Subcommittee and the
select committee that drafted legislation leading
to the creation of NASA. In the 1960s, he was
tapped to serve on the Warren Commission,

investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy
and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. And he
might have gone on in this fashion indefinitely,
happily serving Congress far from the limelight,
if not for a series of events that crippled his
party.
In 1964, Ford watched with concern as the
Republican National Convention was dominated
by Senator Barry Goldwater and other deeply
conservative members of the party. The
senator's strident speeches and systematic
exclusion of moderate Republicans left Ford
dismayed, and on election night, his fears were
realized. Goldwater’s extremism alienated many
voters, and the 1964 election cost the party
three dozen seats in the House.
This is when Ford gave in to the urging of
his moderate Republican peers and agreed
to run for House minority leader. In 1965,

Photo: Newport News Shipbuilding

22

Photo (above): Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

S T A T E & HILL

he won the office by four votes, becoming the
highest-ranking Republican in Congress. As
minority leader, Ford attempted to develop
more substantive and positive Republican
platforms. He campaigned for moderate
Republican candidates, and helped to narrow
the gap between the Democratic majority and
Republican minority in the House. And along
the way, he also did what the House minority
leader is supposed to do: he engaged with the
majority, across the aisle, to address issues of
joint concern.
Democratic Representative John Dingell,
the longest-serving member of Congress,
remembers Ford fondly. “When it comes down
to it, the best political leaders are those who

A 1948 billboard in Grand Rapids, Mich. during Gerald
Ford’s first campaign for the House of Representatives.

put partisan labels and rhetoric aside to best
get the job done.” Though from opposing
parties, Dingell and Ford did just that, he says.
In 1973, when Richard Nixon nominated Ford
two days after Agnew’s resignation—setting
in motion the “extraordinary circumstances”
under which Ford would later assume the
presidency—Congress deliberated, as it must,
but only briefly. Ford’s bipartisan leadership,
civility, work ethic, and modesty had earned
him the respect of his peers. His nomination
was confirmed by an overwhelming majority of
Republicans and Democrats in both houses. ■

Ford School Spotlight
Opposite: “I christen thee United States ship…”
On November 9, Susan Ford Bales christened the
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the first of America’s
next-generation aircraft carriers. Dean Collins attended
the event in Newport News, VA. The ship will have a
lifespan of 50 years and will be completed in 2015.

ant to learn to curse in Bulgarian? Experience mixing, grinding, and
stuffing your own sausages before you launch your career in DC?
Challenge your school’s dean to a game of Whirly Ball? Enjoy
a momofuku-style Bo Ssam dinner with six of your closest friends?
Just attend the Ford School’s annual Charity Auction.

For the past 15 years, Ford School students have organized hundreds of
fundraisers for local charities—weekly bake sales and annual Big Lebowski
Bowling Nights, periodic penny wars and poker games, tasty ethnic lunches
on the run, and catered evening banquets in the Great Hall—but while they’re
all clever and entertaining, and more or less lucrative, none can compare to
the students’ annual Charity Auction.
In the past decade alone, the student-run Charity Auction has raised more than
$100,000 for ten local and international nonprofits nominated and selected
by the students themselves. They’ve included a support program for military
families and returning veterans, an organization that works to promote peace
and understanding in the aftermath of war, and a nonprofit—founded by one of
our own Ford School alums—that helps thousands of young people engage in
meaningful volunteer opportunities in Detroit.

In the past decade alone, the student-run Charity Auction has
raised more than $100,000 for ten local and international nonprofits nominated and selected by the students themselves.
In 2011, the Casablanca-themed auction raised $11,000 for Freedom House
Detroit, an organization that helps survivors of persecution seeking political
asylum in the United States and Canada. In 2012, the Magic-of-Motownthemed event raised $12,000 for Alternatives for Girls, a Detroit nonprofit
serving homeless and at-risk girls. Last spring’s Charity Auction, with a
Roaring 20s theme, raised $9,000 for Detroit Action Commonwealth, an
organization that combats homelessness.
Recent auction items included puppy play dates, golf outings, Detroit tours,
statistics lessons, growlers of homemade hard cider, and lunch with the Mayor
of Ann Arbor (the mayor teaches a Ford School class on local governance).
The highest selling items in 2013? $825 for a cocktail reception for 25 hosted
by faculty members Megan and Kevin Tompkins-Stange and $775 for a threeday, two-night stay at the 1,800-acre Henry Ford family estate along the
Ogeechee River in Georgia.
In 2013, the University of Michigan Alumni Association recognized the
Ford School Charity Auction with the Forever Go Blue Award for External
Philanthropy. Want to contribute to the 2014 Charity Auction? Quirky goods
and services are always welcome. ■

Ford100
S T A T E & HILL

Ford School 100:
centennial stories
The Class of 1948’s Ben Williams visits the Ford School

T

he launch of the Institute of Public
Administration (IPA) in 1946 was
a turning point for the school
now known as the Gerald R. Ford
School of Public Policy. Originally
established in 1914 to prepare graduates
for careers in municipal government, the
IPA was designed to prepare graduates
for careers at the state level, and to serve
the rising demand for well-trained public
administrators—a demand brought on
by the close of WWII and the growth of
American cities.
(MPA ’48), who recently
returned to the Ford School for a visit, was
among the first graduates of the Institute
of Public Administration. During the war,
Williams had been stationed in Canada,
where he was charged with helping send
thousands of P-39s and P-63s, so-called
tank destroyers, to the Soviet-German front.
“They were obsolete as far as our service
was concerned,” he recalled. “This was a
collection of all our outdated airplanes; we
sent them to Russia, and they were just the
tool they needed to get the German tanks.”

Class photo: Larry Collins

Ben Williams

Ben Williams (MPA ’48) (first row, second from
right) and the rest of the Institute of Public
Administration community. Inset image:
Williams returned to campus this September.

When the war ended, Williams returned to
Michigan, and enrolled in the University of
Michigan’s newly-constituted Institute of
Public Administration. And after graduation,
he took a job as a budget examiner for the
state transportation department.
Back then, much like today, finances
were tight, so all budget requests were
thoroughly scrutinized. Williams would help
transportation department staff members
consider their requests from all angles,
developing answers to the critical questions
they’d be asked by the legislature: “What’s
it going to cost? Is it worth it? And what’s
the public going to gain from what you’re
proposing?” Throughout his career, he
helped to grow and maintain the state’s
highways, airways, and waterways.
In 2014, the Ford School will celebrate all
of the alumni who—like Ben Williams—
have designed, informed, and implemented
well-crafted public policy,
improved lives, and
made our world a
better place. ■

25

A few of the centennial
events to look forward
to in 2014
‘War on Poverty’ a 50th anniversary
review of what’s worked, what
hasn’t, and what’s ahead, organized
by the Russell Sage Foundation and
the Ford School’s National Poverty
Center. Generous support provided
by The Ford Foundation. January 8,
2014, Washington, DC
Lecture and networking event in
DC following the Ford School’s
annual MPP recruiting trip, featured
speaker Professor Justin Wolfers.
February 6, 2014, Washington, DC

Honoring Edward M. Gramlich and
the importance of policy research:
A conference sponsored by the Ford
School and hosted by the Federal
Reserve Board. May 30, 2014,
Washington, DC
Amnesty and Forgiveness:
Implications and enduring lessons
from the Ford presidency. Fall 2014,
Ann Arbor, MI

Centennial Reunion and
Community Celebration recognizing
the Ford School’s 100th anniversary
during U-M’s homecoming weekend.
October 31-November 2014, Ann
Arbor, MI
See back cover for more events.

Share your memories
Were you a student in the IPA? An
IPPSter? Or among the first Ford
School classes? What do you
remember about the school, your
cohort, the classes, or the times?
Please share your best Ford School
memory at fordschool.umich.
edu/100-reunion/memories.
You can also send photos to: fsppalum@umich.edu. We’ll share
your stories throughout the year.

26

Fac ulty

Faculty News
& Awards
John Ayanian published an article in

the New England Journal of Medicine on
Michigan’s approach to Medicaid expansion and reform. The article received
coverage in Crain’s Business Detroit and
Crain’s Business Michigan, as well as on
Michigan Radio.
Dean Susan M. Collins began her twoyear term as president of the Association
of Professional Schools of International
Affairs (APSIA). APSIA comprises 34
member schools and 35 affiliates in
North America, Asia, and Europe dedicated to the improvement of professional
education in international affairs and the
advancement thereby of international
understanding, prosperity, peace, and
security.

Ayanian

In September, Sheldon H. Danziger
published an op-ed in The New York
Times arguing that the official poverty
measure reported by the Census Bureau
is inaccurate because it does not reflect
the value of poverty interventions like
food stamps and the earned income
tax credit.
In August, Alan V. Deardorff participated in a National Council of Applied
Economic Research workshop in New
Delhi, India on “India in the Asian
Century.” In September, Deardorff led a
discussion at an expert meeting on nontariff measures hosted by the United
States International Trade Commission
in Washington, DC.

New Faces

T

he Ford School is delighted to welcome three new faculty to the
school this fall: Catherine Hausman , an assistant professor who
focuses on environmental and energy economics and applied

econometrics; Joshua Hausman , an assistant professor who studies

economic history and macroeconomics with a focus on the U.S.
economy in the 1930s; and Joy Rohde , whose research integrates
U.S. political and intellectual history with the history of science.
All three will teach Ford School courses in winter 2014.

C. Hausman

J. Hausman

Rohde

Collins

Danziger

Matthew M. Davis launched a free
online course on Coursera titled
“Understanding and Improving the U.S.
Healthcare System” aimed at addressing
questions raised by the Affordable Care
Act. Coursera is a massive open online
curriculum that U-M launched last year to
provide free courses on a wide variety of
subjects for learners from any background.
Susan M. Dynarski presented a paper
at a Hamilton Project forum on the evolving
role of higher education in American society.
Her paper, co-authored with Education
Policy Initiative postdoctoral fellow Daniel
Kreisman , proposes a single, incomebased student loan repayment system.

Postdoctoral fellow Joshua M. Hyman
received a research grant from the
Spencer Foundation to study the impact
college financing information has on
enrollment decisions students make.
The project, a collaboration with the
Michigan Department of Education,
is titled “Information and College
Enrollment: Evidence from Two
Statewide Experiments in Michigan.”
Philip B. K. Potter published an
article in the September 2013 issue
of International Studies Quarterly,
“Electoral Margins and American
Foreign Policy.” Potter argues that presidents who win elections by a large margin
authorize the use of substantial military
force more regularly, but do so at the
expense of personal diplomacy and lowlevel crisis engagement. Potter was also
interviewed by The New York Times
about the growing risk of terrorism in
China following the October 28th attack
in Tiananmen Square.

In September, Joy Rhode published
Armed with Expertise: The Militarization
of American Social Research during the
Cold War. The book examines the controversies over Cold War social science and
reveals the persistent militarization of
American political and intellectual life.

S T A T E & HILL

Deardorff

Ruff

Simon

In June, Craig Ruff joined the
administration of Michigan Governor
Rick Snyder as his special advisor for
education. Ruff is overseeing the gamut
of education policies from pre-school
through adult education. Ruff served
under Governor Milikien from 1972–
1983 and, prior to returning to the State
House, served as a senior policy fellow
at Public Sector Consultants (PSC).
Carl P. Simon was named one of the top

Michigan by the Online Schools
Michigan website, a resource for
students to learn about online education
options in the state. Simon was selected
because of his work with the application
of dynamic modeling to the movements
of economy over time.
In June, Betsey Stevenson was appointed to President Obama’s Council of
Economic Advisers. The three-person
council is charged with offering the
president objective economic advice on
the formulation of both domestic and
international economic policy.

Susan E. Waltz launched the Human

Rights Advocacy and the History of
Human Rights Standards website,
a collaboration with Albion College
Professor Carrie Booth Walling. The site
aims to bring attention to the historical
role of human rights organizations in
building international policy and provides a valuable resource for students,
instructors, researchers, and advocates.

Ford School Spotlight

As part of our commemoration of
President Ford’s centennial, the Ford
School hosted a lively and insightful
conversation in New York City, featuring
eminent statesmen Henry Kissinger ,
56th Secretary of State, and Paul H.
O’Neill , 72nd Secretary of the Treasury.

Ford School undergrad and graduate
students asked questions of former U.S.
Senator Olympia Snowe in small groups
before her Policy Talks @ the Ford School
lecture at Rackham Auditorium. After her
lecture, Senator Snowe met with
attendees and signed copies of her new
book, Fighting for Common Ground.

27

28

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Al umni

Class Notes
Boatman

Ben Williams (MPA ’48) visited the Ford
School in September 2013. Upon his
graduation in 1948, Ben worked as a
Budget Examiner in the Office of Budget
and Management for the State of
Michigan. Later, he served as an
Administrative Manager in the Michigan
Department of Transportation.
David Fauri (MPA ’64) is serving as

2½ months in New Zealand as this year’s
William Evans Visiting Fellow. DeJong
spent much of his time lecturing in five
New Zealand cities on topics related to
his research at MedStar National
Rehabilitation Hospital and Georgetown
University School of Medicine in
Washington, DC.

David Weiner (MPP ’83) was promoted
in September 2013 to Assistant Director
for the Tax Analysis Division at the
Congressional Budget Office. He previously served as the Deputy Assistant
Director in the same division.

After an extensive nationwide search,
the Board of Governors of the American
Chiropractic Association (ACA) selected
James Potter (MPP ’88) as its Chief
Executive Officer.

President, Government Relations for
Hilton Worldwide, hosted a joint reception with Visit England and members of
Parliament at DoubleTree by Hilton,
London Westminster to celebrate and
highlight ways the Government can promote British tourism.
In September 2013, Jack Smalligan
(MPP ’89) was promoted to Deputy
Associate Director for Education, Income
Maintenance, and Labor in the Office
of Management and Budget within the
Executive Office of the President. Jack
took a sabbatical from OMB in 2012 to
be a guest scholar at Brookings and a
research fellow at the Harvard’s Kennedy
School.

the International Finance Corporation
(IFC) in November 2013. He plans to do
part-time consulting on issues related to
climate change.

Class of 20??

Fonseca

Jim Spaniolo (MPA/JD ’75) recently
moved back to Holt, MI after serving as
president of The University of Texas at
Arlington for the past nine years.

Alan Miller (MPP/JD ‘74) retired from

In September, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Alan
Cohen (MPP ’75) as a Member of the
Social Security Advisory Board. Cohen
served as the Senior Budget Advisor and
Chief Counselor for Social Security for
the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance
from 2001 to 2012.

Brunn

Jeff Wallbaum (MPP/MA ’96) and Scott
Dillon celebrated their first nine years
together by getting married in March
2013. They live in Washington, DC.
Francisco Sanchez (MPP ’88) hosted a

small tailgate at his home for the U-M vs.
Notre Dame game in September. Ford
School alumni and students spanning
four decades were in attendance.

Earlier this year, Meghan Henson
(MPP/MBA ’97) became the Chief Global
Human Resources Officer for Chubb
Insurance based in Warren, New Jersey.
Meghan was previously Senior Vice
President of Human Resources for PepsiCo.

29

Franzblau

Maxwell

Potter

Mellie Torres (MPP ’97) received her PhD

in education from New York University’s
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education,
and Human Development in 2013.
Xiaodong Zhang (MPP ’97) recently
joined IMPAQ International as Managing
Director and Principal Research Scientist.
Previously, Zhang earned his PhD in Public
Administration at American University.
Heidi Goldberg (MPP/MSW ’98) is happy
to announce the birth of her daughter,
Ruth Zora Goldberg, born on July 6,
2013 and weighing 6 pounds, 8 ounces.
Michael Landweber ’s (MPP/MA ’98)

debut novel, We, was published by
Coffeetown Press in September. Michael
works at the Small Business Administration
Office of Advocacy as a Senior Advisor
and Director of Regional Affairs.
Olga Stella (MPP ’99) and husband
Dante Stella welcomed daughter Silvia
Mara Stella on November 12, 2012.

On August 10, 2013, Annie Maxwell
(MPP ’02) married Adam Pike in Santa
Barbara, CA. They live in San Francisco,
where Annie is the Chief Operating
Officer of the Skoll Global Threats Fund.
Laura (Smith) Curry (MPP ’02) and

to the middle of the Pacific to become the
Organizational Performance Manager for
the newly-formed Hawaii Public Charter
School Commission.
This fall, Angela Boatman (MPP/MA
’06) joined the faculty at Vanderbilt
University as an Assistant Professor of
Public Policy and Higher Education in the
department of Leadership, Policy, and
Organizations.
Tyler Curtis (MPP ’06) and wife Lily
Clark (MPP ’06) are pleased to announce

the arrival of their son, Nathan Edward
Curtis.
Andrew Schroeder (MPP ’07) received
the President’s Award from Esri at the
organization’s Global User Conference in

Rix

Tourek

San Diego this July. Andrew was honored
for the value of his mapping work with
Direct Relief International in improving
humanitarian medical assistance around
the world.
Manny Teodoro (PhD ’07) joined

Schroeder

Williams

Gabriel Tourek (BA ’10) is a first year

PhD student in Public Policy at Harvard
University. He spent the last two years as
a research fellow in the Evidence for
Policy Design program at the Center for
International Development at Harvard’s
Kennedy School.

the faculty of Texas A&M University as
tenured Associate Professor of Political
Science.

Rebecca Lopez Kriss (MPP ’11) was

In October, Andreas Hatzigeorgiou
(MPP ’08) defended his doctoral
dissertation in economics, “Information,
Networks, and Trust in the Global
Economy—Essays on International Trade
and Migration,” at Lund University,
Sweden.

Sarah Obed (MPP ’11) was promoted

Marissa Rollens (MPP ’08), Foreign
Service Officer with the Department of
State, began her three-year tenure as a
policy adviser to U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM) in Stuttgart, Germany.

This June, Erik Fonseca (MPP ’09)
was elected the 11th president of the
Voces Latinas Toastmasters Club in Los
Angeles, CA. The club provides members
with the tools to become better public
speakers and leaders in their communities.
In May, Elizabeth D. Brouwer (BA ’09)
started a new job as a Health Economic
Analyst at the University of Washington’s
Global Health Department examining the
cost-effectiveness and equity of global
health interventions.
This fall, Colin Lewis-Beck (MPP ’10)
began work on a PhD in Statistics at the
University of Iowa.
Daniela Pineda (PhD ’10) became the

first Strategic Data Officer for the
Postsecondary Success Team at the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Craig Cammarata (MPP/MS ’10)

became Director of Decision Analytics for
Enviance, Inc. in July 2013. He works
with the federal government and Fortune
500 companies to systematically assess
environmental risks to inform more sustainable business decisions.

promoted to Manager, Entrepreneurial
Investment for the City of Philadelphia’s
Department of Commerce. She works to
improve Philadelphia’s startup ecosystem.

to Vice President of External Affairs at
Doyon, Limited, the Native regional
corporation for Interior Alaska. She will
be responsible for representing the
corporation on a wide range of matters
before federal, state, and local governments,
and reviewing and analyzing legislative
issues.
Candice Ammori (BA ’12) recently

finished a year with Princeton in Asia
teaching Singaporean students business
communications at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
She moved to Cambodia in October to
work with Vision Fund, the microfinance
arm of World Vision.
Chris Brunn (MPA ’12) joined Google
as a Partner Technology Manager.
He manages the success of some of
Google’s largest partnerships.
Jesse Franzblau (MPP ’12) is currently

working as a research consultant for the
National Security Archive—a research
institute located at the George Washington
University. He provides policy analysis on
security sector reform and transitional
justice efforts in post-conflict countries.
Lydia McMullen-Laird (BA ’12)
received a Fulbright Scholarship to
China. She will study Chinese-Russian
relations.
Nathan Rix (MPP ’12) was promoted
to Strategic Initiatives Project Manager in
the Office of the Chief Operating Officer,
State of Oregon. He focuses on aligning
state services to the priorities of Governor
Kitzhaber’s Regional Solutions Centers.

30

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

THE LAST WORD

Our next century
As the University launches a major fundraising initiative, “Victors for Michigan,”
State & Hill speaks with the co-chairs of the Ford School’s campaign,
Jim Hudak (MPP ’71) and Jim Hackett (BGS ’77).

S&H: Why did you commit to co-chair this campaign for
the Ford School?

I was a 1971 graduate of the program—the first
year they gave the MPP. After 20 years of government I
went into the private sector. I went to Yale undergrad on
full scholarship, but I give here, because Yale has lots of
people who can afford to donate. Here, most of the alums
go into government, and they don’t have the resources
to do all the things we need to do. And the other reason
(gestures) was because Jim was going to co-chair with me.
Hudak:

He just stole my answer (laughs). My motivation
is a discussion that I had with President Ford two or three
years before he passed away. He asked me to his office in
Grand Rapids to share that we were quite close to hitting
our goal for the (new Ford School) building. He just asked
“Can you help?” And the way he did it was so down to
earth, and you didn’t feel pressure. Later, it was just an
honor to meet talented graduates that I respect so much.
So I thought, this is need-based, President Ford wanted it,
I meet great people, and it feels like it all fit together.
Hackett:

Hudak: I was the youngest of three. My mother was a
librarian and my dad was a high school teacher and
football coach in a very small rural school. They taught
us to give back, to leave your community a better place.
I couldn’t afford to come to the U-M. I was already married,
I had a kid. I got a full scholarship here. So part of my
passion for the school is to give money for scholarships or
fellowships, so that talented kids can come. I’m excited to
meet two of the Hudak Fellows at lunch later today.

S&H:

Describe the goals of the Ford School campaign.

Hudak: The school has to accomplish three things. One, it’s
got to attract the best students, and that takes money, because
other schools can offer them scholarships and we need to be
competitive. Second, we must have the best faculty. To do that,
we must have endowed chairs, and the competition for faculty
is really fierce right now. And then the third is to do the kind
of research and study and engagement that actually can make
change in major societal problems.

Those are the three things that make for a great public
policy program, and none of those come without the money
behind it. I once worked for the Sisters of the Immaculate
Conception in San Antonio Texas, and they had a great
saying, “no money, no mission.”
There are countless worthy causes out there; why
should people invest in the Ford School?

S&H:

As a business person, I’d say that you can have
the wrong action at the right time, or you can have the right
action at the wrong time. This (program) is the intersection
of right time and right action: it is crucial that we find ways
to build new capabilities for governments—improvement
and modernization and what I call the design of our future.
I think there’s a magical moment for our fundraising and
that people will be compelled to act right now if we can get
to the right people and have a discussion about that.

Hackett:

What campaign message would you want to send to
alumni?

S&H:

Hudak: Give what you can! I’d like to see us have the highest
percentage of alumni participating, even if it’s a couple
dollars from each. Also, they’re in positions where they have
contact with the people who want to make a constructive
change and have the means; help us reach those people
about why they should give to the Ford School.

But don’t let them off the hook about contributing! Even in
small amounts, a high participation rate means a lot.
S&H:

20 years from now where would you want to see the school?

Hudak: My answer is simple: whether you’re in government
or in business, if there is a complex problem the first place
you think about going is the Ford School. This is a place that
can bring an objective, analytic approach; you’re not going
to get that giving to a law school or a business school. This
school can make a practical impact on the problems that are
most important to us. ■

Jim Hudak (MPP ’71) and Jim Hackett (BGS ’77).

Ford School Spotlight

In July, Worldwide Ford School Spirit Day brought
together alums around the globe—including this group in
Washington, DC—to reconnect with friends and toast
President Ford on what would have been his 100th birthday.

Victors for Michigan
On November 7, the University of Michigan publicly launched its ambitious
fundraising campaign of $4 billion—the largest effort in the history of public
higher education.
The University’s highest priority is to raise funds for student support so that
every student accepted by the University can afford to attend and so that every
student can have an outstanding student experience.
The second priority is to extend learning from the classroom out into the world,
providing a global purview and encouraging a creative, entrepreneurial mindset.
The third priority, linked to the U-M’s responsibility as a public university, is to
collaborate on bold ideas that address the world’s most challenging problems,
such as sustainability, kindergarten-12th grade education, and cancer.
On November 8, a community-wide celebration kicked off the public phase of
the campaign with festive events on Ingalls Mall and in Hill Auditorium.

Printed on paper made from
100% post-consumer waste
using biogas energy.

Ford100

Join us

in person or online for these upcoming Ford School events:

January 8

February 6

May 30

January 8, 2014 marks the 50th
Anniversary of the ‘War on Poverty’
launched by President Lyndon B.
Johnson. With the Russell Sage
Foundation, the Ford School’s National
Poverty Center will release an edited
volume assessing the impact of
these programs, and the significant
work that remains, at an event in
Washington, DC. Support provided by
The Ford Foundation. Live streamed.

Honoring Edward M. Gramlich and
the importance of policy research:
A conference sponsored by the Ford
School and hosted by the Federal
Reserve Board in Washington, DC.
Keynote live streamed.

February 3

The future of the Voting Rights Act:
Is there one? A Policy Talks @ the Ford
School lecture by Heather Gerken,
the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law
at Yale Law School. Live streamed.

March 25
Kevyn Orr will deliver a Policy Talks
@ the Ford School lecture one year
to the day of his appointment as
emergency manager of the city of Detroit.
This event is co-sponsored by CLOSUP.

April 10-11
Poverty, policy, and people: 25 years
of research and training at the
University of Michigan, a conference
honoring Sheldon Danziger. The
conference will include a Citi Foundation
Lecture by Rebecca M. Blank, chancellor
of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Lecture live streamed.

October 31-November 1
The Centennial Reunion and
Community Celebration: Join us for
major celebration of the Ford School’s
centennial held during U-M’s
homecoming weekend. Activities
include featured panels, keynote
speaker, reception, tailgate, football
game, and opportunities to network
with alumni, faculty, staff, students,
and guests. For details and to share
your memories: fordschool.umich.
edu/100-reunion

Visit fordschool.umich.edu/events for more details or fordschool.umich.edu/videos to watch videos from our past
events. For the latest event news, sign up by emailing fspp-events@umich.edu or following @fordschool.

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fordschool.umich.edu/stay-connected

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